I still hunt my Grand Mothers country for goanna, bush medicine and yams.
I hunt all year round, hunting and walking through the country makes me happy. When I look at the distant hills I can feel my grandmother. Bush flowers are everywhere.
Painting and printing my grandmother’s country reminds about those times.
This painting is of my Mother’s Country, where the enookecha (kunga berry) trees grow.
After the rain the enookecha come out, the rain makes the flowers and seeds fall to the ground and then the fairies come.
They are sweet, good fairies that live in the enookecha trees and they come after the rain. When we go out we can feel them there.
This is the soakage (place to dig to find water) after the bushfire, made by a lightning strike. It burnt the grass down, then the rain came and the grass grows sweet and new. The kangaroos come out for the new grass, so we can go hunting for kangaroos and goannas, it is easy hunting because the land is bare of bush and we can see them
My homeland is Tijamburra, Canteen Creek, I love that country, it is my Grandmother’s country and it is the only country that I paint. It is fresh country after the rain and it is always plentiful with bush tucker and bush medicine. There are many soakages (places to find water) and we have names for all of them. You can sit there in the shade of the big trees and I love to camp there, the little children in my family never want to leave and want to swim all day in the cool big swamps
Me, my dad, little brother and mums we was walking back from Lake Nash then my dad found a bloodwood tree with clean fresh water, and then he grabbed an axe and started chopping it down to get water from it and then I ran with billy can to my father then he got some for us before we start back walking gave some to our mums and dad and then we all started walking back to Amaroo Station
When it starts to rain the creek beds start to flow. Good for the plants and animals. Then everything starts to turn green. The animals are happy for the water especially after we have had hot weather.
After the rain we go and cut the bush medicine for flu. We boil it and drink it when we got flu and sore throat.
This is my country, it’s the country around Irrultja. This is where we like to go after big rain. After big rain there, we can go swimming. There is always good hunting on my country. It is good for me to paint my country and it makes me feel good.
The artists of Ampilatwatja made a conscious decision not to paint altyerr (dreaming stories). The artists paint their country where those stories sit.
Tharrkarr (honey grevilla) – these are in bloom across my country after the rains, the arlketh (white gum) also flower in the gum trees near where I live.